


it's a phase, it's chemistry, it's your own fault

by jaekyu



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fraternity, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Sneaking Around, acquaintances with benefits, as in nothing happens on screen but like They Do Be Doing It, lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24917437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71





	it's a phase, it's chemistry, it's your own fault

**Author's Note:**

> just kinda busted this one out after i came to a stand-still on some other wips. i don't hate it but please do not expect anything of real substance here. also @ lucas wong you are a very nice boy i'm sorry i made you an asshole in this.

hangovers feel good when I know it’s the last one  
then I feel so good that I have another one  
**— CAR SEAT HEADREST.**

**I.**

It always starts the same way.

It’s always a party at Sigma Chi, _girls get in free, guys 10$ at the door_ , the shitty keg beer in dusty red plastic cups, a haze of heat from bodies, haze of vape smoke, haze of alcohol in Mark’s brain. 

It’s always someone — sometimes it’s Donghyuck and sometimes it’s Yuta and when it’s Johnny, he’s always the one who says it with the most disdain — saying something sort of like, “don’t look now,” not always exactly this but always something similar to: “don’t look now but Wong Yukhei keeps looking this way.”

It’s always Mark feigning ignorance, even in the face of those who might see right through it. It’s Mark pretending like he’s not going to look, shrugging and bringing his cup back up to his lips, and then letting his eyes flick over at truly the exact last, single possible moment.

It’s always their eyes meeting. Yukhei likes to lean against the wall with his hands in his pockets, and someone’s always talking to him, but he’s never paying attention. But Mark would not say Yukhei is paying attention to him either. He would highlight the lack of Yukhei’s attention to anything, as if everything around him is not worth his time.

It’s always Mark counting in his head, _one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand_ , and then finding Yukhei gone from his spot against the wall. It’s always Mark saying something non-commital to his friends as an excuse. It’s always the long walk up the frat house stairs, and instead of Mark counting seconds it’s Mark counting steps so he doesn’t stumble. It is always the fifth room on the left. It is always the three short knocks to the wood of the closed door.

It is always the same teeth of the wolf in Mark’s gut, cutting into him. It is always a bittersweet taste in the back of his throat. It is always, simultaneously, like the feeling of having a bucket of freezing cold water being dumped over his head and heat spreading out to all his limbs from the base of his spine.

It is always Yukhei waiting behind the door when Mark opens it. 

**II.**

What’s that saying? 

Once — the first time, the original sin, the apple in the garden of Eden, the foundation of the house of cards — once is chance. 

Twice is coincidence. It is the chips falling where they may. Twice is the last time you will find absolution for this decision. The decision you’ve already made, the decision you will continue making.

Because three times? 

Three times is a pattern.

Mark’s problem’s, he thinks, can all be traced back to this singularity: he always does things one time too many, and they always, always become a pattern.

**III.**

The only person who knows, really, is Johnny. 

Mark supposes his other friends might suspect things, but they do not mention it, and Mark will never ask them about it. 

But the lectures always come from Johnny, frowning with his arms crossed. “You don’t have to deal with it, y’know,” he says.

“Deal with what?” Mark responds. He pretends to be absorbed into his textbook the way he pretends to not know what Johnny is talking about.

“The way he treats you,” Johnny elaborates anyway. “The way he acts around you when everyone else is around. It’s not fair. He’s being an asshole.”

“He is an asshole,” Mark shrugs, as if he’s done everything he could possibly do in this situation, examined every avenue and every variable and decided that, unfortunately, this is where he’ll always end up. Time is a fucking flat circle, or whatever.

This is the part where Johnny always gets frustrated. Mark doesn’t expect him to get it. Mark isn’t sure he really gets it either.

Johnny sighs and leans back into his library chair. “I just wish you’d stop with all this, I don’t know, self-flagellation. He’s not worth it.”

Mark wishes he could explain to Johnny that he knows that, he’s known that all along, but it doesn’t matter. But that’s not the answer Johnny wants to hear, and it’s not the answer Mark wants to say out loud. Saying it out loud will be like tying concrete blocks to his legs and jumping into the deep end of the pool; the reality will be inescapable, and then Mark will drown.

So he shrugs again, lamely, and says, “whatever.”

**IV.**

When he thinks about the first time, Mark will always lament his naivety. Will lament the way he had supposed that the first time would also be the last time.

He doesn’t know why, in the crowd of people at Sigma Chi that night, Yukhei picked him. He could have picked anyone — that’s the kind of person he was, the kind of person he is. Mark already knew who he was, that night, and Mark is sure that Yukhei had no idea who he was. Not until he found Mark on the back porch, sharing a spliff with Jaehyun, one of the only Sigma Chi’s who actually knew Mark by name. He had stuck his hand out the same you’d ask for a piece of candy when you were a kid, and asked Mark, “can I have some?”

Eventually, Jaehyun had left. Mark doesn’t remember where he went. By this point, the weed has fuzzed his brain and his eyesight and his sense of touch. The world felt like TV static around him. It’s in the cloud of all of this — the night spread out around Mark, in a way that could be infinite, the yellow glow of light coming from inside, the stray vibrations of the music that catch Mark’s ear, the air still smelling like weed — that Yukhei kisses him.

Yukhei kisses Mark first, which seems like the most far-fetched detail of this story, but it’s the truth.

Mark kisses him back, but Yukhei kisses him first.

Yukhei kisses like he wants to know all your secrets. Mark suddenly wants to tell him the way he’s not quite felt himself since he left home for college, wants to tell him about the time he broke this glass ballerina his mom kept on her night stand and blamed it on his brother, that he’s terrified of bees, that sometimes he worries about so much, so often that he’s afraid his heart might give out. He doesn’t say anything, because his mouth is preoccupied, but he can almost feel all these hooks attached to fishing line catching on things Mark could say, would say, and tugging, tugging, tugging. 

The song that was playing inside went _maybe I would like you better if you took of your clothes_ and when he looks back on this moment — the first time, the original sin, the chance — Mark will think that that is what they’re talking about when they’re talking about dramatic irony.

**V.**

There is a two week period where Mark and Yukhei do not see each other. 

It is — Mark hesitates to say _good_ because he is not getting laid, and not getting laid is decidedly worse than getting laid, and no one will argue with that, he thinks — but it is illuminating, is maybe the word.

He doesn’t go to any parties. He goes to Johnny’s a lot, and then Taeyong and Yuta and Jungwoo come over, and Johnny lets them smoke in his apartment as long as they crack a window and direct the smoke out of it as best they can. They play video games and make jokes at Mark's expense. He goes to bed earlier. He spends less money on coffee and eating out. He tries to finish assignments prior to the night they are due. He does not think about Yukhei. He thinks about maybe talking to the girl who always sits at that table close to the one he uses the most in the library. He doesn’t think about Yukhei.

Inevitably, Yukhei texts him. Is there anything more embarrassing than that? The way it’s always Mark waiting, and it is always Yukhei calling, and it is always Mark answering. 

And see, that’s the problem with letting things become a pattern: it does really make it all much easier to rinse, and then repeat.

**VI.**

There was this one time Yukhei accidentally left one of his t-shirts at Mark’s.

Mark still has it. It sits at the back of his closet, folded small and stuffed away. Mark hasn’t washed it and he hasn’t told Yukhei he has it. He does not touch it. But it’s there, in Mark’s closet, and Mark doesn’t think about it, except for when he does.

**VII.**

Another party at Sigma Chi and Mark is exhausted.

Yukhei finds him in the bathroom.

“I couldn’t find you,” he says, and Mark is so, so tired and he kind of just wants to say, _I was avoiding you_ , to maybe assert something, maybe see Yukhei’s reaction, maybe a combination of both. 

Instead, Mark just says, “sorry.”

Yukhei is always the one who kisses Mark first. Maybe there’s something to be said about that but Mark will not be the one who says it. All he does is let Yukhei kiss him first. All he does is try and remember that all the secrets he wants to confess with the way Yukhei kisses him are not worth it.

_I wish —_ , Mark brain scratches at the back of his neck, and he stomps on it until it turns itself into dust. 

“You look really good tonight,” Yukhei says. He slides his hands just under Mark’s jacket to grip his hips, Mark’s t-shirt still a layer between skin on skin. 

“You too,” Mark replies, and he means it. Yukhei looks good every night. 

_I think there’s something you should —_

Yukhei presses their mouths together again. He is slow and methodical and messy all at the same time. Mark can’t stop thinking about how Yukhei is always the one who kisses him first. He almost wishes he could prove that rule wrong, but every time Yukhei stops kissing him Mark stops thinking about it, and if that’s just Mark’s brain trying to exert the smallest amount of self-preservation, well, then — so be it.

Someone knocks on the bathroom door. Yukhei shouts through it to tell them _occupied!_ , and then, _go piss outside!_

Who ever is on the other side of the door yells, “fuck you.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Yukhei shakes his head, “fuck me, whatever you say, bro,” and he moves his head to kiss Mark again and —

And Mark can’t help it, this whole situation — and not even just this night, but all the nights before it, and all the nights that lead up to those nights, and that line that’s drawn it’s way through Mark’s life to bring him into this exact point, in this exact bathroom, at this exact party, with this exact person — it’s ridiculous. So he laughs. 

And maybe he’s just fucking losing it, maybe it’s finally really starting to get to him, like Johnny always said it would, but he just fucking laughs.

**VIII.**

Here’s the thing: Mark is not delusional. He has not convinced himself of the existence of things that are not there. He has his feet squarely planted on the ground, no matter how much better it would feel to let himself float away elsewhere.

Here’s the thing: he knows Yukhei does not want to be his boyfriend, and so he will not ask Yukhei about it, and he will not expect anything from Yukhei that suggests the contrary.

Here’s the other thing: knowing something won’t happen is one thing, hoping it might is another, and neither of those things are a problem Mark has. Wishing that things might change, that’s a third thing all on it’s own, and that’s probably where Mark starts to get his feelings hurt.

On a Sunday morning, Mark slides his sneakers back onto his feet and says to Yukhei over his shoulder, “I think we should cool it for awhile.”

He does not turn to look at Yukhei. He sits, spine straight like someone has slid a pin into Mark’s neck, down, down his spine until it reached to the base of it, and his hands on posed both of his knees. Mark does not count the seconds it takes Yukhei to answer.

“Okay,” Yukhei finally says. 

And if Mark told anyone that that was the reaction he was hoping for, that would be a lie. But it doesn’t matter, because he won’t tell anyone any of this.

**IX.**

It always starts the same way. It always ends the same way. What is an ending if not the precursor to beginnings? Maybe everything’s a pattern if you look at it the right way. 

A week later, a party at Sigma Chi that Mark attends, again. He would not know how to answer the question of _why?_ if someone asked him. He doesn’t drink beer this time, he does three shots of tequila with Jungwoo and then three more with a pretty girl from his afternoon Tuesday lecture. 

A party at Sigma Chi where Mark talks to this girl. She has small shoulders and a small waist and when she tosses her hair behind her shoulder Mark can smell her shampoo. 

A party at Sigma Chi where Mark looks over this girl’s shoulder and finds Yukhei watching him. He looks unaffected. He always looks unaffected. Mark wishes he could find something, anything, to make him look like he’s engaged in the world around him. Like his actions have consequences, like he could maybe, possibly, care about anything.

A party at Sigma Chi. _One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand_. A girl forgotten in the living room. The staircase, the fifth door on the left, the three knocks. The pattern, repeated, beginning and ending and beginning again.

**X.**

If once is chance, and twice is coincidence, and three times is a pattern, Mark starts to wonder:

What could you call all the times that come after that?

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> title from [Not What I Needed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOq8zTh4Sg4) by Car Seat Headrest. the song playing at the party is [If You're Too Shy (Let Me Know)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jQ7Jyb-j8A) by The 1975.
> 
> i'd be down to write more in this 'verse, but i have no immediate plans for anything. if you have anything you'd like to see from these two numbskulls, you can put it in my [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/bloodbuzzed). here's my [twitter](https://twitter.com/sIeepwellbeast). now back to my other wips.


End file.
